


Psalm 88

by Sidonie



Category: Justified
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, Angst, F/M, Religious Content, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-02
Updated: 2012-06-02
Packaged: 2017-11-06 14:04:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/419712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sidonie/pseuds/Sidonie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For perhaps the first time in its history, Harlan is the safest place for miles around.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Psalm 88

**Author's Note:**

> Written for this zombie apocalypse ficathon. The prompt was: "Justified + Ava Crowder (Boyd/Ava) + _you held my hand, led me homeward. i looked for you, you were nowhere. holding tight my hand was my own_ "

_O Lord, God of my salvation,  
I cry out to you by day.  
I come to you at night.  
Now hear my prayer;  
listen to my cry._

For perhaps the first time in its history, Harlan is the safest place for miles around. Not Lexington—too many people, city folk who couldn’t handle themselves when the dead rose, broken and rotting, more plague than revelation. But Harlan, Harlan is small, isolated, buried deep in the holler, and if there’s anything the people of Harlan know how to do, it’s put folks in the ground. Near everyone old enough to remember the Cold War has a bomb shelter full of canned goods, and Ava thanks the Lord for paranoia as she spoons baked beans out of a tin.

_For my life is full of troubles,  
and death draws near._

Harlan, Kentucky, where there ain’t a house standing that don’t have a shotgun in the closet, as Raylan pointed out when he drove down from the city, the sides of his town car painted with blood, his voice thick with fear and the accent he never left behind. Harlan, where the general store has more bullets than candy bars. Where the folks are hard enough to level a gun at any creature yet known, even if it wears the face of a loved one. Harlan held out for a long time.

_I am as good as dead,  
like a strong man with no strength left._

They found Arlo in his house, a half-empty bottle of bourbon on the table, his pistol on the floor where it had fallen from the hand that drooped limply by his side. They buried him together, under the headstone already inscribed with his name, and no one spoke of sin.

_They have left me among the dead,  
and I lie like a corpse in a grave._

Raylan went to find Winona. That was his mistake. Loretta followed him, despite strict orders to the contrary. She slipped away in the night, ghostlike, leaving only the worn flannel shirt Ava had given her, a shirt that had been Helen’s once.

On the eighth day after their departure, Boyd and Ava burned it. He read a service and the smoke stung their eyes until they wept.

_I am forgotten,  
cut off from your care.  
You have thrown me into the lowest pit,  
into the darkest depths.  
Your anger weighs me down;  
with wave after wave you have engulfed me._

Ava never could understand why out-of-towners called Harlan “quiet” or “empty.” Sure, the folk weren’t many, but walking down Main Street you were guaranteed a few waves, calls of greeting, maybe a conversation if you ran into someone you hadn’t seen in a while. You knew the people—who was having a baby, who’d just gotten their release, who was like to make captain of the baseball team next year. Lexington was noisier, but you were more alone there, she’d always thought.

At least, that used to be the case.

Was this how it had always looked to city folk? Dusty streets lined with decrepit buildings, all peeling paint and blank, shuttered windows. Bullet holes in the walls, shelves broken and bare, their goods all pillaged weeks ago.

Once, Ava’d had a fling with a carpetbagger from New York. She was seventeen and starry-eyed, and the way he talked about home made her want to run away with him and become a big-city gal, wear her skirts too short and go out dancing every night. He hated Harlan with a passion, and so did she—too small, too confining, too parochial for her teenage dreams. Desolate, he’d called it.

That wasn’t true then, though she’d believed it.

It was true now.

_You have driven my friends away  
by making me repulsive to them.  
I am in a trap with no way of escape.  
My eyes are blinded by my tears.  
Each day I beg for your help, O Lord;  
I lift my hands to you for mercy.  
Are your wonderful deeds of any use to the dead?  
Do the dead rise up and praise you?_

The feel of warm blood on her hands, red and loud as a shout, brings Ava back to the present. She sucks in a deep breath, wiping trembling palms on her shirt. There’s a bottle of whiskey next to her, and she picks it up, pours a little on the wound, wincing at the hiss of pain.

“It’s all right,” she murmurs. “It’s gon’ be all right, don’t you worry. Jus’ hold on, keep talkin’. Talk to me.”

A heavy, wet cough, a moment of silence, and the recitation continues. “Can those in the grave declare your unfailing love? Can they proclaim your faithfulness in the place of destruction? Can . . . can the darkness speak of your wonderful deeds? Can anyone in the land of forgetfulness talk . . . a-about your righteousness?”

Strong fingers clutch at her shoulder, and she puts her hand on Boyd’s, smiling weakly down at him. “I’ve got a needle, we’ll sew this up right quick. Talk.”

“Ava, I do appreciate your reassurance, but—”

“How does the next part go? I keep forgettin’, for all that momma made me learn my Bible.”

He’s looking up at her, expression soft, big eyes a clear green in the fading afternoon light. “O Lord, I cry out to you.”

“That’s it. Go on.”

“I will keep on pleading day by day. O Lord, why do you reject me? Why do you turn your face from me?” He laughed, a choked, desperate sound. “I suppose I could have picked something more uplifting.”

“That you could’ve.” Ava presses their cleanest pillowcase against his chest, soaking up more of the blood pooling in the ragged bite. “You’re gon’ be fine, though, ain’t too bad a wound. You’ve survived worse, if I recall.”

“Ava.” She looks down, muscles in her jaw working, and Boyd reaches up to brush his thumb across her cheek. “We both know that ain’t how this works.”

Taking a big, shuddering breath, she rocks back on her heels. “I know.” Slow, more sure than she feels, she draws the pistol from Boyd’s hip holster. “Keep talkin’.”

He nods, holding her gaze. “I have been sick and close to death since my youth. I—I stand helpless and desperate before your terrors. Your fierce anger has overwhelmed me. Your terrors have . . . have paralyzed me.”

The gun is a familiar weight, cool and solid. She grips it harder, checks that there’s a bullet in the chamber. Her hands are tacky with blood, trembling, but not enough to throw off a shot, not at this distance.

“They swirl around me like floodwaters all day long.” Boyd’s voice is calm and strong, the slow drawl slurring a bit with pain. “They have engulfed me completely.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. The crack of the shot echoes through the holler, and it seems to Ava that’s the only sound left in Harlan these days.

_You have taken away my companions and loved ones.  
Darkness is my closest friend._


End file.
